Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction

by Alison Macleod

  At Friday noon, the head of the salvage operation will stand in the parking lot of the Sou’Wester Restaurant and confirm for the world media that the plane hit the water so violently it shattered into more than a million pieces.

  John Campbell stares into a rock pool while a reporter from Toronto questions him. She thinks him shy, an old bachelor who can’t look a woman in the eye. ‘That’s all,’ he says, patiently: he was watching the Titanic video by himself at home when he heard an almighty boom of thunder. ‘A double thump,’ he says, like the sound Concorde makes when it breaks the sound barrier over the Bay every morning. Except this time, the beams in my house shook.’

  ‘A double thump?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like a heartbeat.’ She makes a note.

  He wants her to go away. ‘They’re doing coffee and tea in the vestry, you know,’ He doesn’t want her to see the baby’s shoe floating in the rock pool.

  Brenda Murphy is about to be interviewed in St John’s Church by a middle-aged man in an Armed Forces uniform. They loiter by the church portals, looking out towards the brooding Bay.

  ‘Well,’ he says at last.

  ‘Yes,’ she sighs.

  He motions her into the crying room. There is a wooden desk on which schoolchildren have etched their names, and two chairs. He looks not at her but at a humming laptop screen as she gives her name, address and place of work. She feels the words-to-be jangling within her. She looks at this man, at the dark hair that springs from the gaps between his buttons, and she despairs that he is not enough; that neither of them is enough.

  On Wednesday night, she was in her mobile home at New Harbour Point. She opened the door at ten-thirty to let out Lucky, her dog, when she saw something, about 300 yards across the Bay. ‘At first it was a light like I’d never seen,’ she says. ‘I thought, isn’t that beautiful. You see,’ she adds, blushing, ‘there was a lot of mist out here, so the whole sky was glowing with it. For a moment, I wondered if maybe it wasn’t a dying firework behind the cloud cover. Or a meteor maybe. Everything was luminous, and, it’s funny, but I felt almost luminous myself with it. You don’t think, do you? By the time I spotted the flames, it was falling into the Bay.’

  Ginny told Kurt she wasn’t going to wait for their marriage to burn out when he did. He said, ‘We’ll have a baby. Soon.’ She said, what did he expect her to conceive with – a turkey-baster? He had energy, brio, charm, maverick wit – all of the above –for his colleagues, for his students. Then he returned to her, spent, cold.

  And she felt isolated in Hamburg. Hamburg made her ridiculous. Irrational. It made her cry after lunch at his mother’s. It made her sicken for no reason at the sight of the small scar on his mother’s face, visible through the heavy beige matte of her foundation. It made her start wondering what Kurt’s family had got up to – had really got up to – during the war. His father had been a leading chemist. Could one suddenly turn up as a leading chemist in 1949? And hadn’t Kurt’s grandfather or great-grandfather been a phrenologist? Wasn’t that just steps away from eugenics? Could she propagate such a line?

  It made her crave American TV. After work, she watched more and more, an overzealous observer of bad dubbing, angrier each time at the incongruity of lips. These days, she told Kurt, she felt badly dubbed herself. Her voice seemed to slow in her head as she spoke, as if some inner clockwork was running down.

  Kurt does not take a complimentary newspaper or the duty-free list. He does not watch the security video on the overhead monitor. He strips the small white pillow of its plastic case, leans his head back, and remembers, in spite of himself, the first time Ginny flew back to the States for Christmas, leaving him in Hamburg. He slept every night with his face buried in her nightdress. Four years later, who were they? She returned each day from the circulation desk smelling of yellowing books – a vomit-like smell he remembered from school textbooks. He’d never wanted sex less. She had never been so broody. She moved sluggishly. She was putting on weight. When the offer came for the residency in New York, he thought it was the answer. She said, what was the point? He’d never come home there either.

  DESY, his employer, agreed the release to the lab at Brook-haven – so he started life anew in her home town. She remained in his. They agreed separation, anti-climactically, weeks later by long distance. They discussed practicalities. They confirmed they’d see other people. That was what separation meant.

  Kurt opens one eye. The beverage cart is trundling its way down the aisle. He thinks about phoning Ginny on the in-flight phone. He imagines waking her from sleep; telling her he is speaking to her from ten thousand feet and rising. He imagines her voice warm, drowsy, unguarded: ‘Head in the clouds? Not you,’ she says, smiling through a yawn. He wonders whether he can say, casually enough, ‘Maybe I’ll hop a flight from Geneva to Hamburg. Can you get a day off?’ He is digging for a credit card when Hal looks up from the pocket security card and smiles broadly. It can wait, Kurt tells himself.

  Across the aisle, the stewardess is speaking to John and Joan, from Eugene, Oregon. Joan is in her mid-sixties. He’s maybe ten years older. She orders a vodka with cranberry juice and thanks the stewardess for the extra blanket. ‘Do you know,’ Joan says, ‘we last travelled to Europe together for our honeymoon twenty-five years ago? We’d each been widowed the year before; were both travelling on business. I worked for the Democrats then. John was in ladies’ hosiery – sorry, honey. He owned a ladies’ hosiery wholesalers – she knew what I meant. We met on a plane travelling out of Minneapolis. I’m sentimental about it,’ she says, ‘but John hates flying as much as ever, don’t you, honey?’

  ‘A Scotch, please,’ he barks at the stewardess.

  Kurt has been trying not to stare at the stewardess’s brochure-face as she guides the stubborn drinks cart down the aisle. He tries to stop looking through the fresh white cotton of her blouse at the outline of her bra. He does not want to succumb to cliché. He is bored. That’s the problem. Hal has had the window blind lowered since take-off.

  ‘After you, Kurt,’ says Hal, lowering his meal tray. The stewardess is standing, attentive, above them. She has a small mole on her right cheek.

  ‘Thanks,’ smiles Kurt. ‘A white wine, please.’

  ‘French or German, sir?’

  ‘French.’

  She selects a wine glass from a compartment in her cart. She unpeels a bottle top with a flick of her long nails and unscrews the lid. He lowers his tray.

  ‘Kurt, don’t take this the wrong way,’ says Hal, suddenly staring at him, ‘but you’ve got one mega case of hair static. It’s airline pillows, right? Synthetic fibres. Get you every time. Just be grateful you’ve still got hair to stand on end.’

  The stewardess is waiting, glass poised in hand. She smiles politely at him. But her eyes, Kurt thinks, are amused. He feels very short seated so far below her. He raises a hand and tries to flatten his hair without obvious self-consciousness. ‘Here, Kurt,’ says Hal, ‘allow me.’ Hal turns, raising his left arm to Kurt’s head even as Kurt reaches for the glass. There is a collision of limbs. The glass falls, shattering on Kurt’s tray.

  ‘Whoa!’ says Hal. John and Joan twist in the seats. Kurt spreads his legs quickly, to avoid the cascade of wine. The stewardess is quick with towels and apologies. ‘I’m fine,’ he says, helping her to collect the glass shards. Hal orders a Coke and shuts up. Kurt does not return to his CD player. His hand clenches their shared armrest. Hal cedes it to him.

  Kurt has in fact forgotten Hal. He has even forgotten the wet patch on his groin. He is years away, at the wooden table in the big kitchen of his parents’ house. It is Saturday. The stone walls keep the room cool, even on a hot August day like this one. They have finished lunch: cold ham, broad beans from the garden and Marthe’s homemade brown bread. He and his father have embarked on Kurt’s weekly science lesson. They are reviewing Newton’s Laws of Motion when something crashes on the wall behind. They turn simultaneously, father a
nd son, an echo of profiles. At the back of the kitchen, Kurt’s mother is smashing her Hungarian wedding crystal.

  It explodes against the wall, the kitchen tiles. Particles of crystal fly, glittering and white, like handfuls of new, powdery snow. Kurt sees a single fragment fall in the dog’s water bowl. Marthe, their housekeeper, runs in and out again.

  Kurt’s father sighs, turning back to his son’s diagrams and tapping them with the point of his pencil. ‘Your mother gives us a useful case in point. Kurt? Are you listening? No, look at me. Newton’s laws do not rule out the possibility of each glass your mother now throws at the wall reassembling itself and leaping back into her hand for her to return it to the shelf. “For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.” Yes? Ah, I see the frown. My only son thinks I take liberties. But wait. We’ll return to it. For now, tell me this. What does this seeming reversibility of action also suggest? What is the other implication, Kurt…? No? I will tell you then. It suggests that time too, in principle, is reversible.

  ‘Consider this, my boy. We know time only as the unfolding of events, yes? We have no other means of understanding it in practical terms. If an event were to fold back on itself, so too should time insofar as we understand it. But do not forget: either way, backward or forward, time – or the metaphorical flow of it we read for time – is illusory. That means invented, Kurt. Made up. Yes? If there is only space-time, and the best minds of this century tell us there is, why might effect not precede cause?’

  Kurt is embarrassed that his father talks while his mother cries – or is he embarrassed that his mother cries while his father talks? She is behind them still, her hand a fist around the stem of a glass, her face like a piece of crumpled fruit.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dr Zucker continues, ‘perhaps if we could see beyond – could really see beyond – the convention of chronology, Kurt, perhaps if you and I and Mamma could believe, could know, that this Christmas we will again toast the season with the clinking of the Hungarian crystal, the necessity of that future event, the certainty of it, would operate as cause and bring both pressure and precision to bear on the atoms that constitute the shards of crystal that are now scattered on our floor. The inevitability of that event would effect a transformation we, in our ignorance, could only think magic’

  As always, Kurt falls in love with the sound of his father’s voice. It is assured. It rolls on, like a drum roll, promising something. He ceases to care about his mother breaking glass and crying.

  ‘And this is the thing, Kurt. The First Law of Thermodynamics does not constrain the glasses in any way that rules out them assembling themselves and jumping back miraculously into your mother’s hand. Are we agreed? Good. So where would that energy come from, you ask? Where? Well, you tell me, Kurt.’

  Another glass shatters against the wall.

  His father taps his forehead. ‘Think, Kurt. Think.’

  ‘From the energy the glass has gained in flight?’

  ‘Exactly. So what then is the difficulty for our Christmas toast? Why will we be drinking from paper cups this year? What stands between us, Kurt, and the reversibility of time?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  His father frowns. ‘Last week. Remember Maxwell and Boltz-mann? Remember thermal equilibrium?’ He looks up, sees a cut on his wife’s face. ‘Never mind. Let’s return to the facts of your mother’s wedding crystal. The energy each glass gains from falling must go somewhere, yes? There must be an equal but opposite reaction of some kind. So where does it go? What happens? It goes into heat, Kurt, does it not? The atoms in the glass fragments and in the floorboards are moving around just a little faster now than they were before. The glass and the wall and the floorboards will be warmer than they were a few minutes ago. And yes, this heat energy is, in theory, just enough to raise all your mother’s glasses and return them to the shelf, one by one. So what is the problem, Kurt?’

  ‘The motions of the atoms are too messy to coordinate themselves?’

  ‘Precisely. Heat is simply uncontrolled particle motions – and, as far as we know, uncontrollable particle motions. So it is heat that makes the motions, the events, of this life irreversible. It is heat, ultimately, that creates the illusion of the flow of time. Why? Because where there is heat there is entropy, and entropy knows only one direction. It is the world running down. It is manifest disorder. It is your mother’s wedding crystal in pieces here on the floor.’

  Dr Zucker puts down his pencil and closes Kurt’s notebook. He brushes the lunch crumbs very carefully from the table into his hand. He pushes back his chair. ‘Next Saturday, son. Yes? Next Saturday.’ And Kurt watches him recede down the corridor, crumbs still in the fist of his hand. When he looks back to his mother, curled in a chair by the window, he says nothing. He can only stare at her, as if she is an intruder in the cool kitchen hush.

  That first day, Ron expected body bags. He was prepared for body bags. Black Spunbond shells laminated with polyethylene film. Or maybe the heat-sealed PVC type, better if there are body fluids. He’d seen them often enough in his father’s embalming room. He did not expect crates. He did not expect heavy-duty, zip-lock freezer bags. He’s standing by his truck with the guy from Health & Safety. ‘Body bags, mostly, just weren’t feasible,’ he’s saying to Ron.

  ‘Sure, no, I understand.’ Ron hoists the crates slowly, loading the rear compartment first, bag by bag: segments of limbs; a finger with a ring on it; an ear; a toe; handfuls of soft tissue; three testicles; a foot in a shoe. He signs the dispatch form for Health & Safety. He nods when the guy mentions the counselling services available on and off site. Then he slams the DuraSeal doors against death and climbs into his cab.

  ‘And I thought the hearse was heavy to steer.’James McLelland is sitting in the passenger seat, hands firm on his knees. ‘How many miles you do to the gallon?’

  Ron rolls his eyes.

  ‘Seatbelt, son.’

  He reaches for his belt, shifts into gear, and waits for someone to move the security barriers.

  ‘So what they doing for a morgue, Ron?’

  ‘Hangar B. At Shearwater.’ Ron negotiates a tight turn, glad to be moving at last.

  ‘In 1912, it was the Mayflower Curling Rink on Agricola Street.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Thought you’d have your own fleet by now. Somewhere hot. Somewhere far from here.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Neil’s done well for himself, hasn’t he? Those pre-planned funerals seem to be taking off.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘He and the family going to Florida again this winter?’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘Linda fine?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’m not gloating, Ron.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We are what we are. And we McLellands, we’re ushers, Ron. Like midwives are ushers – or used to be anyway before the damned hospitals took over. They often came in families too, if I recollect rightly. It’s a privilege, Ron.’

  ‘I’m volunteering. A couple of days. Maybe a week. That’s it.’

  ‘Time’s a switchback sometimes. You have to go backwards to go forward again.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Time doesn’t need my permission, Ron.’

  ‘Mind if I turn on the radio?’

  ‘How many lost out there?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty-nine.’

  ‘Won’t be easy.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘They’ll start with distinctive marks and so on: a tattoo, an old fracture that might have been screwed together. Jewellery helps, of course – rings, watches and so on. Dental records will narrow it down a little. Footwear too, where they can make a match. Do you know what the airlines can’t afford to tell you? Keep your passport in your shoe – that, I’m told, is your best chance of an early identification. Next, it’s legs and arms. After that, well, it’s down to the l
arge intact remains of what we call “no visible anatomical character”. That’s legs which could be arms; arms which could be legs.’

  ‘They’ve got DNA testing these days, Grandad. So let’s change the subject, okay?’

  ‘I’m not being morbid, Ron.’

  ‘You do a good impression.’

  ‘I had a life looking death in the face, and I’ll tell you this. A bit of the living always go with the dead. It’s two-way traffic, Ron. And I was proud to know that. It’s you, you and your supposed sensitivities, that’s what makes a morbid thing of it. You’re so afraid of the stink, you know nothing else.’

  ‘Not just the stink, Grandad. The wreckage. The debris. Do you know I’ve just put a bag in the back labelled “incomplete infant”. Ever seen one of those?’

  ‘You and your dirty mind again, Ron McLelland. Body parts. You into that? Is that what’s on your mind? Well hear this, my boy. There’s no such thing as parts. Or wreckage. Or debris. Because no one and no thing is ever separate. There’s a wholeness, Ron. That’s right. A wholeness. Go ahead. Smile if you want to. But only the stupid and the young know no better, and Lord knows you’re not so young any more. Now’ – James McLelland suddenly claps his hands on his thighs – ‘all that said, tell me this. Where can a dead man get a cup of tea around here?’

  In the sea of her bed, Ginny wakes with a jolt. She runs naked and half asleep out of her dreams, out of her room, down the corridor, then stops short. She can hear only the gurgling of water in the radiators. It was a siren somewhere that entered her head and metamorphosed into the ringing of the phone. There was no call. No one was phoning. She goes back to bed, cold.